BUDAPEST (Reuters) - European Union member states will be forced to protect themselves from the "threat" of mass migration until they forge a united stance on the problem, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Monday.

"Our borders are under threat, our life based on a respect for laws...and the whole of Europe. We are being run over," Orban told parliament.

He reiterated that the migrant quotas proposed by Brussels were not a "European action plan" as first the borders must be protected and the flow of migrants stopped.

Orban called on all parliamentary parties to support the government in its efforts ahead of a vote on a ruling party proposal to use the army to protect Hungary's borders.

Roughly 10,700 migrants walked into Austria from Hungary on Sunday, more than arrived during all of Saturday, and a motorway passing through the border was partially closed, police spokesmen said.

Croatia, faced with growing crowds on its territory after Hungary barricaded its border with Serbia against migrants heading north, has been bringing people to its border with Hungary, which has been shuttling them to reception centers near Austria's eastern flank.

Hungary's parliament authorized the government on Monday to deploy the army to help handle a wave of migrants, granting the military the right to use non-lethal force.

It passed a law saying the army could use rubber bullets, pyrotechnical devices, tear gas grenades or net guns, according to the text posted on parliament's website.

Hungary, a landlocked nation of 10 million, lies in the path of the largest migration wave Europe has seen since World War Two and has registered more than 220,000 asylum-seekers this year.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban told parliament police were unable to secure all Hungary's frontiers - which include outer borders of the EU's passport-free Schengen zone - without help from the army.

"We can defend the Serbian stretch of the border," he said, adding that fortifications on that 175 km (110 mile)-long section were working better than expected.

Hungary has built a fence on the Serbian border and deployed regular patrols, leading to a drastic drop of migrants crossing it. Instead, thousands have entered Croatia and Zagreb has waved them on to Hungary again.

"We have readiness for that (border controls) at any time, and we have already considerably tightened our policies," Orpo told Reuters by telephone.

Police started random border checks on Saturday in the northern town of Tornio and will launch on Tuesday what the government calls "enhanced foreigner supervision" - such as random identity checks - around the country.

So far this year, about 12,000 asylum seekers, most of them from Iraq, have come to Finland, compared to just 3,600 in the whole of last year. In recent days, about 500 refugees have crossed the Finnish land border in Tornio, near the Arctic Circle, after a long journey through Sweden.

Orpo said Finland should start discussing tougher actions than border controls, without giving any details. He added that he was concerned over tensions between European Union states ahead of an interior ministers' meeting on Tuesday.

"We need a European solution... If one cannot be found, it is clear that Finland cannot take endless numbers of asylum seekers. The line could be crossed at some point, and we haven't actually prepared for that," he said.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government has scrapped plans to deny benefits to asylum seekers who arrive in Germany via another EU member state following resistance from the members of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

A draft law by conservative Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere had floated the idea of withholding cash and non-cash benefits to refugees arriving from other EU countries, and instead providing a travel grant to help them return to the country of entry.

But the proposal met with fierce criticism from the SPD, junior partners in Chancellor Angela Merkel's "grand coalition" government.

Speaking in Berlin on Monday, de Maiziere said the parties had overcome their differences in weekend talks. Under the new draft, asylum seekers would initially receive benefits regardless of how they entered Germany.

Some Iraqi soldiers are abandoning their posts and joining a wave of civilian migrants headed to Europe, raising new doubts about the cohesion of the country's Western-backed security forces in the fight against Islamic State militants.

Interviews with migrants and an analysis of social media activity show scores of fighters from the national army, police and special forces as well as Shi'ite militias and Kurdish peshmerga have left in recent months or plan to go soon.

They join more than 50,000 civilians who have left Iraq in the past three months, according to the United Nations, part of an even larger exodus from neighboring Syria and other conflict zones across the Middle East.